Pictures Every Child Should Know Part 8

This picture is now in the collection of Lord Rothschild, London. Mrs. Sheridan was the loveliest lady of her time. She was the daughter of Thomas Linley, and a singer.

She came from a home which was called "a nest of nightingales,"

because all in it were musicians. The father had a large family and made up his mind to become the best musician of his time in his locality in order to support them. He was successful, and in turn most of his children became musicians. His lovely daughter, Eliza (Mrs. Sheridan), he bound to himself as an apprentice and taught her till she was twenty-one, insisting that she "serve out her time" to him, that she might become a perfect singer. The story of this beautiful lady seems to belong to the story of Gainsborough's portrait and shall be told here.

When she was a very little girl, no more than eight years old, she was so beautiful that as she stood at the door of the pump room in Bath to sell tickets for her father's concerts, everyone bought them from her. When she was a very young woman her father engaged her to marry a Mr. Long, sixty years old. She did not seem to mind what arrangements her father made for her, but continued to sing and attend to her business, till after the wedding gowns were all made and everything ready for the marriage, when she happened to meet the brilliant Richard Brinsley Sheridan, whose plays were so fashionable, and she fell deeply in love with him. She told Mr. Long she would not marry him, and without much objection he gave her up, but her father was very angry and he threatened to sue Mr. Long for letting his daughter go. Then the beautiful lady ran away to Calais and married Mr. Sheridan without her father's permission; but she came home again and said nothing of what she had done, kept on singing and helping her father earn money for his family. One day, Mr. Sheridan was wounded in a duel which he had fought with one of his wife's admirers, and when she heard the news she screamed, "my husband, my husband," so that everybody knew she was married to the fascinating playwright. Sheridan for some reason did not at once come and get her, nor arrange for them to have a home together. For a good while she continued to sing; and once hearing her in oratorio, Sheridan fell in love with his wife all over again. He took her from her home and would never let her sing again in public. They remarried publicly and went to live in London. He was not at all a rich and famous man at that time--only a poor law-student--but he would not let his wife make the fortune she might easily have made, by singing.

This must have made his beautiful wife very sad, but she made no complaint at giving up her music and letting him silence her lovely voice, but turned all her attention to advancing his fortunes. She worked for him even harder than she had for her father, and that was saying a great deal. When he became a great writer of plays his wife took charge of all the accounts of his Drury Lane Theatre, and when he was in the House of Commons she acted as his secretary. Sheridan died in great poverty and wretchedness, and it is believed had his self-sacrificing wife not died before him she would have looked after his affairs so well that he would not have lost his fortune.

Gainsborough painted the portraits of Sheridan's father-in-law, and of Samuel Linley; and it was said that this last portrait was painted in forty-eight minutes. Among his other portraits are: eight of George III., Sir John Skynner, Admiral Hood, Colonel St. Leger, and "The Blue Boy"; but he was first and last a landscape painter of highest genius.

XVI

JEAN LEON GEROME

(p.r.o.nounced Zhahn Lay'on Zhay-rome) _French, Semi-cla.s.sical School_ 1824-1904 _Pupil of Delaroche_

One cannot write much more than the date of birth and death of a man who lived until three or four years of the time of writing, so we may only say that G?r?me was one of the most brilliant of modern French painters. He was born at Vesoul and his father was a goldsmith. Thus he probably had no very great difficulty in getting a start in his work. The prejudice against having an artist in the family was dying out, and as a prosperous goldsmith we may believe that his father had means enough to give his son good opportunities.

G?r?me, like Millet, studied under Delaroche, but became no such characteristic painter as he. While studying with Delaroche he also was taking the course in l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

His first exhibited picture was "The c.o.c.k Fight," and he won a third cla.s.s medal by it.

Almost always this painter has chosen his subjects from ancient or cla.s.sic life, and his pictures are not always decent, but he painted with much care, the details of his work are very finely done and their vivid colour is fascinating.

PLATE--THE SWORD DANCE

This painting may be seen in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The scene is full of action and interest, but perhaps the details of dress, mosaic decoration upon the walls, patterns of the rugs, the coloured and jewelled lamps and windows are the most splendidly painted of all.

The central figure is a dancing girl, only partly draped, balancing a sword on her head, while a brilliant green veil flies from head and face. Other Oriental women squat upon the floor watching her with a half indolent expression, while their Oriental masters and their friends sit in pomp at one side, absorbed in the dance and in the girl. The expressions upon all the faces are excellent and, the jewelled light that falls upon the group, the rich clothing, the grace of the dancer--all make a fascinating picture of a genre type. Other G?r?mes are "Daphnis and Chloe," "Leda," and "The Duel after the Masked Ball."

XVII

GHIRLANDAJO

(p.r.o.nounced Geer-lan-da'yo) _Florentine School_ 1449-1494 _Pupil of Fra Bartolommeo_

It is a good deal of a name--Domenico di Tommaso di Currado Bigordi--and it would appear that the child who bore it was under obligation to become a good deal of a something before he died.

Italian and Spanish painters generally had large names to live up to, and the one known as Ghirlandajo did n.o.bly.

His father was a goldsmith and a popular part of his work was the making of golden garlands for the hair of rich Italian ladies. His work was so beautiful that it gained for him the name of Ghirlandajo, meaning the garland-twiner, a name that lived after him, in the great art of his son. Domenico began as a worker in mosaic, a maker of pictures or designs with many coloured pieces of gla.s.s or stone.

Ghirlandajo's art was no improvement on that of his teacher, but he in turn became the teacher of Michael Angelo.

The Florentine school of painting, to which Ghirlandajo belonged, was not so famous for colour as the Venetian school, but it had many other elements to commend it. One cannot expect Ghirlandajo to rank with t.i.tian, Rubens, or other "colourists" of his own and later periods, but he did the very best work of his day and school. He attained to fame through his choice of types of faces for his models, and by his excellent grouping of figures.

Until his day, the faces introduced into paintings were likely to be unattractive, but he chose pleasing ones, and he painted the folds of garments beautifully. He was not entirely original in his ideas, but he carried out those which others had thus far failed to make interesting.

Often, in his wish to paint exactly what he saw, he softened nothing and therefore his figures were repulsive, but Fra Bartolommeo's pupil gave promise of what Michael Angelo was to fulfill.

Ghirlandajo and Michael Angelo were a good deal alike in their emotional natures. Both sought great s.p.a.ces in which to paint, and both chose to paint great frescoes. Indeed Ghirlandajo had the extraordinary ambition to put frescoes on all the fortification walls about Florence. It certainly would have made the city a great picture gallery to have had its walls forever hung with the pictures of one master. Had he painted them, inside and out, when such an enemy as Napoleon came along, with his love of art, and his fashion of taking all that he saw to Paris, he would likely enough have camped outside the walls while he decided what part of the gallery he would transfer to the Louvre.

One of the reasons that Ghirlandajo is famous is that he often chose well known personages for his models, and as he painted just what he saw, did not idealise his subject, he gave to the world amazing portraits, as well as fine paintings. The same thing was done by painters of a far different school, at another period. The Dutch and Flemish painters were in the habit of using their neighbours as models.

Ghirlandajo is cla.s.sed among religious painters, but let us compare some of his "religious" paintings with those of Raphael or Murillo, and see the result.

He painted seven frescos on the walls of the Santa Maria Novella in Florence, all scenes of Biblical history, as Ghirlandajo imagined them. They show him to have been a fine artist, but to have had not much idea of history, and to have had little sense of fitness.

Ghirlandajo's seven subjects are taken from legends of the Virgin, and the greatest represents Mary's visit to Elizabeth; it is called "The Visitation," and it is a fresco about eighteen feet long painted on the choir wall.

Let us imagine the possible scene. The Virgin Mary came from Cana, a little town in Galilee placed in the hills about nine miles from Nazareth, the home of the lowliest and the poorest, of a kindly pastoral people living in the open air, needing and wanting very little, simple in their habits. Elizabeth, Mary's old cousin, lived in Judea, and St. Luke writes thus: "Mary arose in those days and went into the hill country with haste, into a city of Judea; and entered into the house of Zacharias" (Elizabeth's husband) "and saluted Elizabeth."

This record had been made at least eleven hundred years before Ghirlandajo painted in the Santa Maria Novella, and from it one cannot imagine that Mary made any preparation for her journey, nor does it suggest that Elizabeth had any chance to arrange a reception for her. Even had she done so, it must have been of the simplest description, at that time among those people. One can imagine a lowly home; an aged woman coming out to meet her young relative either at her door or in the high road.

There may have been surroundings of fruit and flowers, a stretch of highroad or a hospitable doorway; but the wildest imagination could not picture what Ghirlandajo did.

He paints Elizabeth flanked with handmaidens, as if she were some royal personage, instead of a priest's wife in fairly comfortable circ.u.mstances where comfort was easily obtained. Mary appears to be escorted by ladies-in-waiting, hardly a likely circ.u.mstance since she was affianced to no richer or more important person than a carpenter of Galilee. Possibly the three ladies that stand behind Mary in, the picture are merely lookers-on, but in that case the visit of Mary would seem to have been of public importance, especially as there are youths near by who are also much interested in one woman's hasty visit to another. The rich brocades worn by Elizabeth's waiting ladies are splendid indeed and the landscape is fine--a rich Italian landscape with architecture of the most up-to-date sort--showing, in short, that the artist lacked historical imagination. He found some models, made a purely decorative painting with an Italian setting and called it "The Visitation." The doorway on the right is distinctly renaissance.

Such a painting as this is not "religious," nor is it historic, nor does it suggest a subject; it is merely a fine picture better coloured than most of those of the Florentine school. There is another painting of this same subject by Ghirlandajo in the Louvre, but it is no nearer truth than the one in the Santa Maria.

Ghirlandajo painted other than religious subjects, and one of them, at least, is quite repulsive. It is the picture of an old man, with a beautiful little child embracing him. The old man may have tenderness and love in his face, but his heavy features, his warty nose, do not make one think of pleasant things and one does not care to imagine the dear little child kissing the grotesque old fellow.

It was before Ghirlandajo's time that another painter had discovered the use of oil in mixing paints. Previously colours had been mixed in water with some gelatinous substance, such as the white and yolk of an egg, to give the paint a proper texture or consistency. This preparation was called "distemper," and frescoes were made by using this upon plaster while it was still wet. Plaster and colours dried together, and the painting became a part of the wall, not to be removed except by taking the plaster with it.

The different gluey substances used had often the effect of making the colours lose their tone and they presented a glazed surface when used upon wood, a favourite material with artists.

There are numberless anecdotes written of this artist and his brother, and one of these shows he had a temper. The brothers were engaged in a monastery at Pa.s.signano painting a picture of the "Last Supper." While at work upon it, they lived in the house. The coa.r.s.e fare did not suit Ghirlandajo, and one night he could endure it no longer. Springing from his seat in the refectory he flung the soup all over the monk who had served it, and taking a great loaf of bread he beat him with it so hard that the poor monk was carried to his cell, nearly dead. The abbot had gone to bed, but hearing the rumpus he thought it was nothing less than the roof falling in, and he hurried to the room where he found the brothers still raging over their dinner. David shouted out to him, when the abbot tried to reprove the artist, that his brother was worth more than any "pig of an abbot who ever lived!"

It is recorded in the doc.u.ments found in the Confraternity of St. Paul that:

Domenico de Ghurrado Bighordi, painter, called del Grillandaio, died on Sat.u.r.day morning, on the 11th day of January, 1493 (o.s.), of a pestilential fever, and the overseers allowed no one to see the dead man, and would not have him buried by day. So he was buried, in Santa Maria Novella, on Sat.u.r.day night after sunset, and may G.o.d forgive him! This was a very great loss for he was highly esteemed for his many qualities, and is universally lamented.

The artist left nine children behind him.

Ghirlandajo's pictures may be found in the Louvre, the Berlin Museum, the Dresden, Munich, and London galleries. Most children will find it hard to see their beauty.

Great men are likely to come in groups, and with Ghirlandajo there are a.s.sociated Botticelli and Fra Filippo Lippi.

PLATE--PORTRAIT OF GIOVANNA DEGLI ALBIZI

This lovely lady was the wife of one of the painter's patrons, Giovanni Tornabuoni, through whom he received the commission for a series of frescoes in the choir of the Santa Maria Novella, Florence. The subjects chosen were sacred, but since Ghirlandajo, no more than his neighbours, knew what the Virgin or her contemporaries looked like, he saw no reason why he should not compliment some of the great ones of his own city and his own time by painting them in to represent the different characters of Holy Writ. So, as one of the ladies attendant upon Elizabeth when Mary comes to visit her, we have this signora of the fifteenth century. The artist made another picture of her, the one here shown, but in the same dress and posed the same as she had been for the church fresco. This accounts for its dignity and simplicity. It would seem like a bas-relief cut out of marble were it not for its wonderful colouring. It is in the Rudolf Kann Collection, Paris. This artist's other pictures are "Adoration of the Shepherds," "Adoration of the Magi," "Madonna and Child with Saints,"